Education for a new ‘museology’

Abstract

This article provides a critical reading of a curriculum initiative in tertiary education designed to address students who are traditionally marginalised in the Australian tertiary sector. An argument is made that this curriculum approach with its emphases on authenticity, identity, agency and embodied learning addresses issues of the disjunct between access to knowledge, museums and cultural capital. The political work of this curriculum is situated in the new museology. The author draws on Ellsworth's sensation of learning to elaborate the contributions made possible by the curriculum Learning and teaching in public spaces to museum education and tertiary education

Keywords:

• curriculum
• museums
• identity
• access
• cultural capital

Notes

For a more detailed discussion of the history and intended audience for museums, see Bennett (2007).

More recently, the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Public Museum had selected objects re-purposed by Art and Design students from a number of different Art and Design Colleges and Universities. Museum staff assisted with the object handling, but there was no curatorial input in issues of content and interpretation. A discussion of this project can be found in Chester (2011).

For an overview of educational resources offered by the Immigration Museum, see http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/education/

On the contrary, attention through exhibition space is paid to the government acts such as the ‘White Australia Policy’, intended to restrict non-white immigration in 1901–1973. For a more detailed discussion of this policy, see Tavan (2005).

This sense of alienation is not limited to museums but also includes tertiary environments that can be understood as middle class.

I intend to deal in detail with why the theme of immigration is important in a future article that looks at education and changing national paradigms.

This is not to suggest that there have not been more recent arrivals to South West Victoria from other parts of the world. According to the 2006 census, 1770 people living in Warrnambool and 729 in Portland were born in a country other than Australia. The majority of these were from the UK.

The Warrnambool family history group generously made their archival resources available to the students undertaking this unit of study. One of the younger students also presented some of the research findings to this group. This was one of the many inter-generational exchanges that occurred during the course of this unit of study.